Editorial

Getting old has become more like it used to be

David A. Lombardo

Those who tend to reminisce about the good old days of the 1950s are about to get a dose of reality therapy. Knee and hip replacement, among a lot of other medical procedures developed to make getting older more comfortable, didn't come into common use until the 1960s. The Affordable Care Act will effectively put senior citizens' medical care back into the 1950s by awarding bonus points to hospitals that spend the least amount of money on elderly patients. Let me be a bit more specific. 

 According to an article written by Betsy McCaughey in the January 2nd issue of Accuracy in Media, hospitals are saying their response will be to do fewer knee and hip replacements, angioplasties, bypass surgeries and cataract operations. What that literally means is the Leave It To Beaver set will be facing the 1950's geriatric fate of inching along in wheelchairs powered by arthritic hands toward a cataract-induced hazy horizon. 

 This is compliments of the Obama administration's $716 billion cut in Medicare funding over the next decade and their rewarding the hospitals that spend the least on seniors, making these and other quality-of-life medical procedures less available. It isn't a new plan: Obama opined at a 2009 town hall debate, "maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller." But there's an upside. 

 While your arthritic, shaking hand is spilling soup on your sweatpants, your heart can swell with pride knowing the money is redistributed into government-subsidized private health plans for those under age 65 and a major enhancement of the Medicaid program. Think you can beat the system by doing something as crass as working all your life and saving an outhouse full of money so you can buy whatever you need? Think again, you rich, effete snob. 

Richard Foster, chief actuary for Medicare, warned Congress that seniors will have difficulty finding doctors and hospitals to accept Medicare. "Doctors who do continue to take it will not want to spend time doing procedures such as knee replacements when the pay is so low. Yet the law bars them from providing care their patients need for an extra fee," he said. 

This is troublesome on several levels not the least of which is longevity. It's one thing to become a drug abuser and be on a perpetual Huxleyan Soma Holiday to stave off pain, but it isn't quite that simple. McCaughey points out those seniors with severe osteoarthritis who opt for knee replacement are less apt to succumb to heart failure and have a 50% higher chance of being alive five years later than arthritic seniors who don't undergo the procedure; the effects of not having such a procedure are obvious. 

One can't find any sense in all this, not even in the Obama Administration's typical sick, twisted, perverted sense of logic. Foster warned Congress that 15% of hospitals may stop treating seniors once the Obama-Care cuts go into effect. The rest will have to lower the standard of care. Hospitals will have $247 billion less over the next decade to care for the same number of seniors they would have cared for if the health law had not been enacted. It is ostensibly done to reduce waste and excessive profits, but Medicare already pays hospitals less than the actual cost of caring for a senior, on average 91 cents for every dollar of care. Pushing down rates will force hospitals to spread nursing staff thinner. 

Research sponsored by the National Institute on Aging shows that heart attack patients at the lowest-spending hospitals are 19% more likely to die than patients of the same age at higher-spending hospitals. Yet the Obama health law pushes all hospitals to imitate the lowest spending ones. The bottom line is simply this: Medicare cuts as put forth by the Obama Administration will end Medicare as we've known it and doom seniors to painful aging and shorter lives. Which brings me back once again to the question: when are we going to take back America?

SAF-amended lawsuit challenges part of NY Safe Act

Nationwide integration of UAVs looming

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Pressure's on to make California a "shall issue" state

As part of its ongoing Carry License Sunshine and Compliance Initiative, California-based gun rights group The Calguns Foundation (CGF) has published two new reports on handgun carry licenses in the state. Based on data from the California Department of Justice and other government sources, the Foundation's reports show an increase of nearly 30,000 handgun carry licensees since it began efforts to make California "shall issue" in May of 2009, when it and the Bellevue, Washington, based Second Amendment Foundation filed the first "right to carry" Second Amendment lawsuit in the nation since the Supreme Court's historic D.C. v. Heller decision in 2008. The Calguns Foundation's many carry license reform victories include: forcing San Francisco County's former sheriff, Michael Hennessey, to institute a way for residents to apply for a handgun carry license after exposing that his lawyer was the only person licensed in the county; Ventura County's near-total adoption of CGF's Model Handgun License Policy; and a settlement with Merced County, stipulating changes to its policies to bring them in line with state law. "Californians are watching the news and hearing about thousands of criminals being released from prison early, robberies, assaults, and all sorts of other horrors," explained Brandon Combs, CGF's executive director. "It makes total sense that they've responded by acquiring handgun carry licenses so they can defend themselves and their loved ones when they're away from home."